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Austria tries 15-year-old ‘terror’ suspect of Turkish origin

Muslims demonstrate outside U.S. Embassy, Vienna, in favor of the Boston jihad bomber

A 15-year-old Austrian schoolboy with alleged ties to Islamist extremists and accused of intending to bomb a Vienna train station went on trial May 26 facing up to five years in prison.

The defendant, named only as Mertkan G., was arrested in October 2014 when he was 14 and allegedly had contact with supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group and Al-Qaeda, the court in his hometown Sankt-Poelten said.

“In addition he is suspected of obtaining instructions on how to make an explosive device from an Al-Qaeda website… in order to carry out an attack in Vienna,” the court 70 kilometres (45 miles) west of the Austrian capital said.

According to the charge sheet, the teenager, who emigrated from Turkey in 2007, wanted to carry out the attack before travelling to join “holy war” in Syria and was in contact with ISIL recruiters in Vienna…